All One Needs to Hnow in Life, One Learns in Kindergarten, may have been the book’s title. What a notion, with its kindness and caring, buoyed by its manners and sharing; how apt tinder for a book burning.
Years back, all were riveted to that November’s ominous news, prevalent with the planet’s political plight, and from a national broadcaster no longer of lore. Though tentative, what optimism existed, and all debate about it, eerily evaporated on that month’s fifth day.
“Swing states,” so termed, swung soundly and unanimously, with the candidate crowned, the electorate elated.
The coronation came quickly, coined a “Shock and In-Awe-guration,” a little lighter on the bombast and fury, though not in any way undermining the coming conflagration’s clarity.
Though of advanced age, the candidate was clearly no sage, relying on soothsayers bent to temerity, tilting the ordained’s prologue to tumult and rage.
Vile villains had been floated for critical posts, a testing of degrees some supposed. As such, they were supplanted by other rascals, ridiculous, but relatively more reasoned.
Some fallacy arose, from that frivolous fountain of fact-hood, claiming with conviction some nefarious notion, that a man of colour was once King, earning fair devotion. Further still, and get this, his would-be successor, similarly tinted, aspired to be Queen. How utterly insane.
The newly appointed Officer of Efficiency shocked all, vanquishing even ventures to Mars. Heroically, he proclaimed, “We have hurricanes, and tornadoes, our air is polluted, our waters are poisoned, why, with fires raging everywhere, what the hell, we’re halfway there!”
Loath to be outshone, the newly minted Officer of the Epidemic astonished all with news of a vaccine, so revolutionary, it rendered those inoculated immune to the side-effect cures of all others. So enthralled were the masses, they lined up for miles, then, many more for extra double-doses. While waiting, they delved into the prescription’s miracle of osmosis.
The O-of-Epidemic’s prevalent placards did, too, proclaim, “Let pestilence persist, its virulence prevail, for it’s culling we quest, any cure is a fail!”
Suburbs with subdivisions times seven soon surrounded all rivers and certainly several seas. Fish floating upside down were fashionably funny, far easier to catch, and decreed highly nutritional, let alone yummy.
Such programs of policy were policed by “patriots,” pardoned, then proffered such positions with much promise of promotion.
Many evangelicals were euphoric, pontificating the hastened return of the Prince, though sooner than later, some suggested, “Why not the candidate as holy ghost?!” After all, his following had fervour, balanced, too, by the temperate and the twisted, such well-organized disorder.
“So what if he’s no lamb? He’s not entirely blemished.”
As per the plagiarized playbook, such populism metastasized into marginalization, followed by discrimination, then on to oppression. The convicted cast their first stones without hesitation, some even with vitriol and vehemence. Understandably, such subpoenas were foremostly discerning, directed to undesirables, audaciously identical in their difference.
Far to the south and way to the east, there were some Uyghurs, but now there ain’t.
Worship centres were tolerated for a spell, but with their tributes pouring into barrels burgeoning with taxes and tariffs, soon enough they were secured, then shuttered.
Some nations’ borders were firmed per pride and prestige, but quickly gave way to tirade and homage from the politically pragmatic “givener-to-governer” — that 51st state.
The despot did boast of GNP growth and plummeting inflation. I mean, seriously, given the foundation of the economy’s firmament — its mayhem and disorder — frankly speaking, who could quarrel? The graphs slid south; they did go awry. That soaring price of bread, always the barometer, soon cost as much as an SUV one plugged in.
Unemployment was so pronounced it was measured in dimensions of width, depth, and swath, though it was not absolute, in fact, definitely not. Soldiers were conscripted at a-thousand-per-hour pace, subbed in swiftly for those expiring at twice the rate.
Wars were then fought in many buffered spaces, once believed to be Bolivia and Bulgaria, Ukraine and Burma, but now, just non-descript states.
Some of the jobless groaned feebly for freedom, though, in fairness, it wasn’t heisted so much as merely mailed in.
Conversely, the field of cartography flourished afar with armies of ambidextrous map makers frantically sketching with two pencils in one hand, three erasers in the other. The more advanced among them carved the cosmos in a colonial quest to claim heaven.
Why, they even re-zipped that line stretching north from Sardinia, through Salzburg, tight to Szczecin.
All that said, the boon in blacksmithing was undoubtedly best, for the forging of seven swords per plowshare pouring in.
Three political powers prevailed, by George, just as that British bloke spoke. Some guy said he’d look it up. Then everyone laughed, for there was no such book, but, they shot him nonetheless.
Monument making was revived with some vim, but, more vigour. The land’s old relic of a rockface was at first lifted, but when it revealed that gangly guy, Lincoln, with leanings to liberty, it was rushed laid to waste, and more aptly reconfigured.
A long-running alliance someone named “NATO” invoked a Clause 5, that proved codeword to cave quickly, should it ever be tested. That big, green iceberg far off to the nation’s northeast got a new flag, while that balmy bay beneath it was renamed the Gulf of Reason.
Where once there were Democrats and Republicans, now there was but one, and, as for elections, well, now, there are none.
* * *
A once-esteemed leader, emanating from the south, with a hundred years’ experience, echoed again that history only rhymes; it does not repeat. He warned further that for whom the bell tolls should best not be determined by trolls.
Then, he promptly checked out.
John Epstein is a former, 25-year Orillia business owner who left southern Ontario for the north years ago, and has never been back.
